


Prompt: Unto Death

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [130]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Magic, Murder, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 05:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11639634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: The deal he made was loosely worded, was agreed simply - death for life. He cannot kill people, will not, could never shame and disappoint Wanda so. He kills rats and mice, pigeons and gulls, spiders and flies and wasps and gnats, small things that no one will miss.He has to kill each day, kill many times, if it is insects, but with his speed it is easy, easy to keep to the deal he made in exchange for his continuing life.





	Prompt: Unto Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanyoky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/gifts).



> For Nell, who prompted this, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/163535570745/new-prompt-pietro-makes-a-deal-with-some-kind-of). 
> 
> Written while listening to [This Remix of _Harder Better Faster Stronger_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXV0LS3ZmpU). 
> 
> "Goddess of the cairn" and "the wolf's sister" are based on real kennings (titles, epithets) used for the Norse Hel, which you can read about [Here](http://skaldic.abdn.ac.uk/db.php?if=default&table=kenning&val=Hel&view=name).

 

 **i.**  
Pietro cheats. The deal he made was loosely worded, was agreed simply - death for life. He cannot kill people, will not, could never shame and disappoint Wanda so. He kills rats and mice, pigeons and gulls, spiders and flies and wasps and gnats, small things that no one will miss. 

He has to kill each day, kill many times, if it is insects, but with his speed it is easy, easy to keep to the deal he made with Hel, to feed her hordes in exchange for his continuing life. He runs, catches flies and birds with his hands, crushes the life from them and whispers a prayer in her name.

It has been years since he prayed, years upon years. The words feel strange on his lips.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
Pietro came back covered in dirt, clawed his way from his grave back to Wanda’s side. She woke, and felt his mind swirling at the foot of her bed, woke and saw her brother, pale and wan and covered in dirt, as though someone had taken his corpse and placed him at the foot of her bed.

And then Pietro had opened his eyes and croaked,  _“Wanda.”_

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Wanda has not questioned his return. Doctor Cho, when asked for an assessment, said she did not know, but that her best guess would be his improved homeostasis, his altered metabolism. Vision concurred, and Doctor Banner and Thor were not there to voice an opinion.

Pietro makes his small sacrifices in Hel’s name, and keeps his secret.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
There are insect carapaces in the folds of Pietro’s clothes. There is blood beneath his nails. Wanda spots these small things, and knows no one else will see them, takes his hands in hers and scrubs under his nails with scarlet, stretches scarlet around him and pulls carapaces from his clothes.

There is none so close to Pietro as she and she will do all she can to protect him.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
“Pietro,” she asks one evening. Her voice is soft, her hands dancing soft scarlet out to light the room. “Pietro, how did you come back?”

It spills out of him in a wave, words tripping over him as he tries to explain everything.

_A deal, an offer-_

_Hel, goddess of the dead-_

_She said I could return if I fed her hordes-_

_I sacrifice. I sacrifice each day._

Wanda watches him, cups his face in her hands, runs her thumbs in hard lines across his cheeks.

“How?” she asks him.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Wanda helps him. She catches flies in her scarlet, catches worms and ants, catches birds and mice and rats, when they fight she fights fiercely, when people attack she fights them off, snaps necks as though by accident and shows no fear or shame.

“You are my family,” she says. “My only family, all I have left. I have lost you once. I will not lose you again.”

Wanda kills in Hel’s name for his sake. Single whispered prayers each time,  _“Death for life, Death to Hela for Life for Pietro.”_

She does not stint, she exceeds Pietro’s efforts. With more than bugs dying, with Wanda’s wilful sacrifice of cats and dogs that wander into the way of battle he is stronger and faster, less tired, more able. With a human life he  _thrives,_  with two he is almost as he was. Wanda smiles to see him so, takes his hands in hers, cups his cheeks and presses a kiss to his brow.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
No one notices the extra deaths. Or: they do, and they excuse it as growing power, ask her simply to try to keep at least one attacker alive for information. Steve is the worst, when he asks it of her, earnest and honest, pleading to a sense of morals she has sacrificed along with every life she gives to Hel.

She sacrifices still, finds ways to make them as often as she can. Three bugs a day can sustain Pietro. Two birds can last him a day and a half. A cat or dog, something well loved, that causes a small death of happiness in those who knew it, can last him almost a week.

A person, a person can last him a month, if they are cared for enough by those around them, if they are vital enough in energy.

When Wanda kills all but the leader of a squad, Pietro seems to shine.

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
There is strife on Asgard, trouble in Wakanda. The world is warping around them when a ship comes sailing through the void of space and crashes into orbit around earth.

“Thanos,” says the one human of the crew. “Thanos, destroyer of worlds.”

“The Infinity Stones,” says the women of green and blue. “You must hide them. Our father will stop at nothing.”

The stones are these: the Tesseract, taken, and the Aether. The purple stone of power is claimed, the green of life, the orange of time, the yellow of mind yet remain.

“I hold the mind stone,” Vision says. “I will not let it fall into his hands.”

Time and life, however, those may yet.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
The twins recoil from Stephen Strange, recoil from the magic he wields as though burned.

“Wanda,” says Pietro, “It looks almost like your powers.”

It is not, but he speaks true.

“Pietro,” says Wanda. “If he knows magic, he may know that of sacrifice.”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
The twins avoid Strange, help guard his stone as they do Vision, as they do the green-glowing vortex of power they discover with the life stone, but they do not speak to him if they can help it, turning into each other, away from all else, as Wanda finds more and more deaths to keep Pietro powerful and strong as Thanos draws nearer.

“He has the space stone,” Bruce asks Thor when the two arrive on Earth, charred and smoking with the remnants of a battle. “Why does he not just warp space to get here?”

“The effect,” Thor says. “He wants to make us afraid.”

“He wants a battle,” says Gamora. “He likes watching people fight for their lives before him.”

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
The battle is...

It is  _glorious_. Thanos has brought Chitauri to bear upon them, and every Chitauri on its own feeds into a yet vaster network, each one cut off is like voiding the eyes of some great behemoth, making it blinder and blinder until it falls to pieces. Wanda kills and kills and kills, breathes prayer after prayer, watches the death fill Pietro with life and strength far beyond the usual scope.

Pietro is killing too, tearing armour plates off the Leviathans, vaporising the other soldiery Thanos has brought to this place with nothing but his growing and growing and growing speed.

Thanos, it seems, was not expecting a blur that moved almost faster than thought to be his opponent.

 

* * *

 

 **xii.** _  
_ “Where did you come from!?” Thanos yells, trying and failing to target Pietro, warping space with his gauntlet only to find Pietro has evaded it once more. “You were _dead!”_

 _Hela,_  thinks Wanda.  _Hel brought him back against your vision._

Pietro is a blur, is almost invisible, if Wanda could not feel his mind, see him with invisible eyes, she would not know where to find him in the slew of death and danger of the battle. Pietro runs, Pietro leaps, life and life and life once more filling his veins until his blue shines as bright as the Tesseract.

Pietro tears the head from Thanos and, for a moment there is peace.

Then the shadows rise.

 

* * *

 

 **xiii.**  
“Hel,” says Thor. _“I killed you.”_

 _“Me?”_  Hel asks. “You, kill me? I am the goddess of  _death_  Uncle. Death cannot hurt me any more than lightning could hurt you, or lies hurt my father. All they do is  _help_  us.”

Thor stands at the base of Thanos’ dais, Hel atop it, her helm of spreading horns spreading and spreading until they shadow Thanos’ corpse, until they seem to fade into the void of space itself.

“So much  _death,”_  she breathes. “I feel alive again.”

 

* * *

 

 **xiv.**  
This is a different battle and the twins are torn in it. Hel can erase a life with a snap of her fingers, can throw a knife out of nothingness, turn shadow into a blade of steel and death. For all they have added to her power, given her soul upon soul to turn into Draugr to march at her side, they know she will not hesitate to kill them both if it comes to it.

She is goddess of death, after all, and she no longer needs them as pawns to make her stronger.

She stands above Thanos’ body, above his half-filled Gauntlet, basking in the power of all those dying beneath her. Her power sings storms onto earth, sings quakes into space, destroys ship after ship of Thanos’ people, until they stand in a mausoleum in space, just them, and the dead around them.

“You have a choice,” she says to the Avengers. “Fight me, and die, or let me rule you all.”

 

* * *

 

 **xv.**  
It is not even a question what the Avengers will do.

 

* * *

 

 **xvi.**  
No words are said. No words are needed. Thor lifts his hammer and even in the void of space, lightning burns, thunder sings out.

“Oh,  _Uncle,”_  sighs Hela. “You already failed once.”

The twins look to each other, Pietro shimmering with blue around the edges, still shining with the life bought from their sacrifice of Thanos - Thanos so ancient, Thanos so powerful - shining with the energy of all those they killed before that.

 _We kill her-_  Pietro thinks.

 _Can we?_  asks Wanda.

 _Sacrifice her to herself,_  Pietro thinks.  _An always loop._

 _Sacrifice her to what she is goddess of,_  thinks Wanda, _feed her power, and yet end her._

Pietro vanishes from her side.

 

* * *

 

 **xvii.  
** “We sacrifice you,” says Wanda, and Pietro is already gone from her side, the other Avengers left staring and confused. “We sacrifice  _you,_  Hel, goddess of death, goddess of the cairn, the wolf’s sister, and we sacrifice you to  _death itself.”_  

Pietro’s hands blur into being around Hel’s head, grasp around the horns to cradle her skull, a hold at once delicate and like iron.

 _“We sacrifice you to yourself,”_  says Wanda, adamant and certain, scarlet dancing out to hold Hel in place. _“_ A sacrifice of always and  _for_ always, of death and  _into_ death, until forever are you ended.” **  
**

Pietro tears Hel’s head loose from her neck with a single, violent jerk.

 

* * *

 

 **xviii.**  
Wanda runs up the dais, taking it three steps at a time, leaping over Thanos’ limp arm, the dangling gauntlet to embrace her bloodied brother.

“Wanda,” he whispers into her neck. “Wanda.”

The blood covers him, an unrestrained spurt from the stump of Hel’s neck drenching his body like that of blessing blood, a sacrament. Hel’s head still dangles from his hands.

Pietro buries his face in his sister’s shoulder.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Prompt: After Death](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668230) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)




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